A "Blessings" Update

I've been spending a lot of time weeding my garden and pricing things for my upcoming garage sale lately, which has given me quite a bit of time to think.  I've been overwhelmed by how many things I have to be nothing but grateful for! 

The number one "blessing", of course, is my salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  It is astounding to me how God would love me so much that He would condemn His only son to a cross, to suffer in my place for the punishment that I deserve!  If I had only this promise - that I have been saved from my selfish sin - I would have everything.  I would need no more.  And yet, because God loves me so much, He chooses to give me tangible, earthly things as well.  So when I list these blessings, please keep in mind to whom it is that I am grateful. 

James 1:17 - "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."

Family
1. My wonderful husband David, who loves and cherishes me far beyond what I had ever hoped for.   Just this past weekend, he saw that I was down and he arranged for me to go out with several girlfriends for a night without children, just to enjoy conversation and food.  David works hard to provide for us all and is a great dad, a godly example, and a good friend to many.

2. Samuel, my sweet little boy who calls himself  "Mommy's 'nugglebug".  I am forever being showered with kisses and hugs, which I never turn down!  Samuel is learning to be courteous to others because he tends to be shy in public.  He's doing a great job answering when adults ask him questions, opening doors for others, and helping me to clear the table after we eat.  Samuel seems to have my personality but is all boy to the core, following his daddy everywhere and always telling us he has "lots of work to do."
I am so happy to report that Samuel has not had an asthma-type attack in a few months now - we will be seeing our allergist to check on his progress from the past year very soon. We have also been working with a dermatologist who understands us and we feel is on our side, and his eczema is almost completely under control at this point!

3. Julia, our little princess with a big personality.  She's opposite of her brother and doesn't know a stranger!  Julia has her own ideas about everything, and keeps us laughing with all of her antics.  I love to watch her with her baby dolls as she takes care of them, feeding them bottles, changing diapers, and rocking them to sleep.  Julia is 100% proof to me that God has created boys to be boys and girls to be girls!  She is all about her clothes and hair, keeping her nails trimmed and painted, princesses, babies, etc.  Julia is a Mommy's girl . . . and I am okay with that!  She is also what I would call the "picture of health", which is huge for us after we've struggled with Samuel's health for the past year.

4. Baby L3 has been growing as well - I am now feeling lots of kicks and wiggles, and we're looking forward to having an ultrasound on August 6th!  As I had mentioned previously, I felt far more sick with this pregnancy than with the other two.  It did last about 2 weeks longer than the others, but I am now feeling great!  We are so looking forward to Christmas season this year, with a new niece and our own new baby coming in just a few short months!  Here is a picture of Baby a few days ago, at 18 weeks.

5. My parents and in-laws.  What blessings they are in our lives!  All four are awesome at the grandparent thing, and our kids beg to see them all the time, which we try to do as often as possible!  We got to take a vacation with the Larsons in June, and are really looking forward to going with my parents on a trip to Dubuqe in a few days.  I am grateful to have both my mom and my mother-in-law, as they are always up for a nice chat, meeting to shop, or coming to help out with the kids.  Along with this part I also must include my awesome sister, as well as the 3 sisters and 4 brothers that I have been given as a bonus for marrying into the Larson family!  They're all great aunts and uncles, and are always there for us as friends and helpers when we need them!

Friends
1. What a neat group of friends we have at Harvest, our church!  We are so thankful to have people we know we can count on of all ages to get together just for fun, or for serious conversation.  We have everything from a young marrieds Bible study, to friends our parents' age to act as surrogate "grandparents" when we need them, to friends our grandparents' age with whom we can just enjoy a great visit!

2. David and I both keep in touch with a few of our college friends.  We get together often with David's best friend Rick, and are thrilled that he and his wife are expecting their first baby in February!  Though I don't see my college girlfriends as often, when I do, we can always just pick up where we left off.  I recently got to spend a whole week visiting with them - Sarah, who lives just an hour from me, came to visit one day.  The next day, the kids and I went to Illinois to see Heidi, who returned on the 6th of July from two years in Peru.  Then we drove down to St. Louis to see Becky and Joe, dear friends of ours who just had their second baby.  How wonderful to have friends we've known for years and who know who we are and who we used to be, and they still love us.

3. I recently received forgiveness from an old friend that could only have been given through the grace of God.  I am so grateful that He restores relationships, and am so humbled by His working in my life as well as friends' so that we can live for God and be at peace with each other!

4.  David and I both have co-workers (mine are former, from pre-SAHM days) with whom we enjoy spending time.  It is so nice to have friends from all walks of life, and we both enjoy all the opportunities we can get to see them.

Finances
1. God's provision of jobs for both of us when we needed them.  Though it was miserable on our family life, we felt that God provided a second job for David at McDonald's last year that we used to get out of the "hole" we'd been in since shortly after our wedding.  When that job was too much, He provided a job for me with just enough to help us get ahead and earn some savings.  Both of these jobs were brief, as they should have been, but during that time we discovered how much we needed each other and for our family to be whole! 

2. Shortly after we quit doing everything but David's full-time job, God provided for us in so many different ways, that it more than made up for that extra income we had been receiving!  God sure does work in mysterious ways.

3. Though I cannot yet share many details (I don't know them all, to be honest!), our great God has provided once again for something that David and I most definitely did not bring upon ourselves.  I can just say that David has been asked to help out an older gentleman in our church for a while this fall.  He will be doing one of his favorite things while earning extra income, and I believe there will be other perks to go along.  More information to come on this one . . . let's just say we are in awe and we are thrilled!

I think this will do for my listings as of now, though the great things God has done just keep on rolling into my head!  Something that I did last fall was to keep a daily "thankful" journal, where I wrote five things each morning that I had to be grateful for.  I would love to start that up again - I truly saw a difference in my attitude when focusing on the good rather than the bad! 

ch-ch-ch-changes!

We are experiencing several changes at our house right now.  For one, yesterday we started the process of refinancing.  That's some fun stuff, let me tell you!  Actually, I am very thankful for a husband who is willing to figure all of that out and get the ball rolling.  I wouldn't get past the "thinking about it" stage!  Can you believe, though, by refinancing, we will be paying less per month for 15 years than we are right now for 30??  That's crazy!  I'd like to keep all that extra money, thank you!

David has also been working really hard to get the outside of our home looking decent.  We decided after 5 years of being here, we should probably repaint the windows, mulch the landscaping, trim the bushes, etc.  He's doing a great job!

Here's another change: my children are learning to be more self-sufficient.  Not necessarily because they want to, but because lately if they want something, they either have to be very patient or to get it themselves.  I simply have been too sick.  With "morning sickness", that is :-)

Sweet baby Julia helping her sick mommy with cleaning

A bit of a story goes with this one.

David's brother Jeff and his wife Courtney, along with David and myself, came up with this awesome plan.  We would hold off on any babies for about a year, so that we could take a trip to Florida next April and Courtney and I would be pregnant at the time.  We were pretty excited about it.

But God started placing all these "circumstances" in my path as He showed me that my plan (as usual) is not His.  I kept on hearing radio program after radio program that talked about babies.  Sanctity of life.  Women who wanted to be pregnant and couldn't do so.  And the list goes on.  It seemed like everytime I turned on my radio for at least a month's time, another of these programs would be on.

I was really struggling with this, wondering if it wasn't all part of God's plan for me to hear those programs.  Finally, at the end of March, I was really down about it and David could tell.  I finally explained to him what was going on, and he said he'd been having the same conviction that maybe our "baby plan" wasn't perfect.  We decided to see how God would work.

I got sick about a week later. 

I must have already been pregnant!  With Samuel, we were so new at everything - married less than a year when we found out we were expecting him.  With Julia, I was so full of resentment that I couldn't enjoy my pregnancy or even her as a baby for way too long.  With this one, I have peace. 

Here's the funny part.  The day after we got a positive test, Jeff and Courtney called.  They had the same story as us - becoming convicted about their plan and then getting pregnant right away after deciding to surrender to God's best for them!  We didn't tell them for 2 more weeks - that was pure torture!  I wanted to share with Courtney so badly my excitement for both of us, but we wanted to wait until we could tell them in person.  It was worth the wait!  And to think, we were both a bit nervous that the other would be upset for ruining the "plan"!

So here's the official announcement.  Baby #3 is due on or around December 11th, just about a week after my sister-in-law is due.  We couldn't be happier!

Which brings me to another change . . . adding a bedroom so we have a place for Baby to sleep!  I'm sure there will be plenty more posts on that subject!

Debt vs. Family

I put in a two-week notice at my evening job last  night.  It was bittersweet telling my supervisor that I would be leaving, knowing that it will leave a gap that they will have to fill, but today I am filled with joy as I watch my children and know that after next Thursday, we can finally be a "normal" family (and normal may be relative!).

Since having children, we really have not been what I would call "normal" because we've been on such a mission to earn income.  Now, I have to say, we have no high hopes of becoming rich by any means . . . we just made a few un-wise decisions early in our marriage that we had to live with and learn from for the past few years.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we are committed to getting out of debt, which means paying off all of our student loans.  After that our only debt will be the mortgage, and we can live with that!

So why would I quit my job?  Normal to us would be where Daddy goes to work, and when he comes home, the family is together - eating, conversing, working on a project - just together.

After making our "bad" decisions (though we've come to realize they were necessary and God used them to teach us to follow Him better), we spent several years playing catch-up.   We had more bills than income, and were constantly trying to fill those gaps.  So David started a demolition business.  I started selling Discovery Toys.  David got a job at McDonald's.  I got jobs at the mall and as a janitor at a local manufacturing plant. 

None of these were bad things to do.  There is no problem with starting a business or selling something out of your home, but we didn't have the capital to be able to make them turn a profit.  There is no problem with getting a second job, but we let those jobs take time from our family.  When David was at McDonald's, he was working about 16-20 hours a day, leaving me at home alone with the kids. While I've been working, David and I meet at the door and he comes in while I'm going out.  Our only time at home together is Wednesdays and weekends.  We're usually busy on Fridays and Saturdays, so we've started using time that we would usually attend church to stay at home and have that family time we've been missing.

We started talking about it and questioning how we could possibly get out of debt, and one of us working a second job seemed like the only way.  Then we met with our CPA to do our taxes.  She is an awesome, godly lady who is familiar with what we are trying to do and has also been through Financial Peace University.  She worked with us and helped us to find a way David can prevent the govenment from taking so much out of his paycheck (yes, it's totally legal!).  And that amount is equal to what I have been making the past few months at my job!

We doubted, we didn't trust that God would take care of our desire and honor our commitment to be debt-free.  Yet, He still provided a way when we didn't expect it!  How awesome! And so, last night my job began to end.  I have 5 more nights of working, and I am so looking forward not only to having evenings at home being a mommy to my children and a wife to my husband, but to going back to church for more than just the morning service. 

I am so thankful for a God who does care about us, who wants us to follow Him and to train our children to do the same.  He provided for us in spite of our best efforts to do so ourselves. 

Eph. 3:20-21 has long been one of my favorite passages: "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever"!!